Dr. Laura Schlessinger is a radio talk show host, heard in the United States Monday-Friday all across the country. The bio from her website is here and the Wikipedia entry, which probably has more information than she would want you to know, is here.
Last year, I posted a topic about Marriage Fitness. The author is Mort Fertel, and he makes no illusions that his method is a quick or easy solution to a better marriage, but he does guarantee it works, if followed. Part of the package includes a book with the same name. He has an interesting perspective on the Biblical story of Rachel and Leah. As we all know, Jacob (who later changed his name to Israel), greatly loved Rachel. After working for 7 years to marry Rachel, he was duped into marrying Rachel’s sister Leah, and then had to...
Greg Prince, author of David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism, was here at USU today. For those interested, I recorded the audio for both of his presentations. The first was delivered in front of Dr. Philip Barlow’s undergraduate Joseph Smith class, and dealt mostly with the writing of his book (from a historian’s perspective). Presentation #1 The second was more like a keynote, and dealt primarily with his main observations from his book about President McKay. Presentation #2 For those so inclined, please enjoy!
It’s the third day of the Our Voices, Our Visions Mormon Women’s Literary Tour and we’re making the long drive on the 89 through the western reaches of the Navajo nation into the red rock country of southern Utah. At Kanab, we turn south towards Fredonia and then west towards the twin towns of Colorado City, Arizona and Hilldale, Utah. There are, after all, Mormon women writers in these communities too: Mormon women with their own rich stories to tell. Thanks to a friend we met at our reading in Tempe, we have been invited to visit with a...
Monday night in Claremont, California, we kicked off the Our Voices, Our Visions Mormon Women’s Literary Tour in the company of an audience of 30 Mormon women ranging from 12 to 80 years old. “This is an historic event,” said event host Claudia Bushman. Yesterday, Susan Scott, Lisa Van Orman Hadley and I crossed the desert from San Diego to Tempe, talking and laughing all the way about things Community of Christ members and LDS folks have in common like ancestral visions and deep connections to Mormon places. As well as the things we don’t, like frog-eye salad...
OT SS Lesson #12 Whether dreams come from the unconscious mind or directly from God, they are valuable sources of revelation. Dreams can tell us important things about ourselves and our relationships that may remain veiled deep in the psyche if we are unskilled at interpreting the symbolic language from which they present. The great attainment of Joseph of Egypt and the message this scriptural character brings to readers of the Old Testament is the importance of developing an ability to decode symbolic dream messages and using them to integrate our conscious and subconscious knowledge.
Richard Bushman has recently given a presentation on ‘Joseph Smith and the Routinization of Charisma’. One of Bushman’s arguments seems to be that Charisma was located in the office rather than the person. That these divine or supernatural powers were transferred to whoever held a particular office. Moreover, it was through this coupling of bureaucracy and charisma that Joseph led the early Church and through which it was transferred to Brigham Young. Yet, as the bureaucracy and membership grew it would seem that the ability of both members and leaders to draw upon or demonstrate this office-based charisma became more...
This week, I’m putting the Ask Mormon Girl column on vacation while I set out for adventure in the great Book-of-Mormon Belt. The Our Voices, Our Visions Mormon Women’s Literary Tour is hitting the road. It’s the first ever literary tour by and for Mormon women, featuring eighteen Mormon women writers– younger and older, new and prize-winning, unorthodox and orthodox—giving readings at five universities from Claremont University to the University of Utah. And it all began yesterday when Susan Scott, a fifth-generation RLDS / Community of Christ woman writer, arrived at the San Diego airport from her home in...
Many of us have been told that no matter what the calling you have, you will learn from it and grow. I imagine that’s probably true of just about anything that you do. So, what have you learned from the various callings you’ve held?
What if — as well as a description of birth order and an indicator of hierarchy — the appellation “firstborn” was also a title? Could the Heavenly Father assign this role to any of his children? This is a question confronted by the audience of “Brothers,” a new play which opened at the Covey Center for the Arts in Provo on March 11th.
My New Year’s Resolution this year is taken from I Corinthians 13:4-7. In a nutshell, it is to become a little more charitable this year. I am studying and trying to practice one of the manifestations of charity listed in Paul’s passage each month. This month, the focus is on charity “vaunting not itself” and not being “puffed up”. I write each Saturday about this resolution on my personal blog, and I want to share something with all of you that hit me as I was preparing to write my post for last Saturday.
Definition self-absorbed: /ˌself.əbˈzɔːbd//-ˈzɔːrbd/ adj usually disapproving . Only interested in yourself and your own activities (http://dictionary.cambridge.org/) I don’t know what it is, society, the culture, the sign of the times, whatever. But people seem much more self-absorbed these days. Now, I think all of us are a bit self-absorbed at times, but there are definite degrees of self-absorption (and not in a Sponge Bob sort of way).
Last year, Elder Bednar gave a talk at BYU-I on a subject that weighed deeply on his soul. At the time, I read his words and felt a twinge of sadness. How could he fear something as useful and worthwhile as online social networking? Sites like Facebook have integrated themselves into the fabric of our society like gold thread in a brilliant tapestry, or like the deep, misty green of kudzu here in Kentucky. It has become a part of who we are. Now, a year later, I still think that Elder Bednar was wrong. Facebook has and will...
One of my favorite experiences at the BYU Studies Symposium was listening to a set of two talks on the subject of sin. That might not usually be such a fascinating topic! But these had a twist which captured my interest — sin and its effect upon human relationships.
A recent visit at FMH and John Dehlin’s Mormon Stories interview with fmhLisa (Butterworth) has made me realise something about myself that I am not very proud of. Therefore, in the spirit of a post I wrote for another blog, I want to confess something. I am sexist.
Watch Here Isa 45:& I form the light , and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the lord do all the things. Amo 3:6 Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD hath not done it? Lam 3:38 Out of the mouth of the most High proceedeth not evil and good? Exo 32:14 And the LORD repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people. 1Sa 16:14 But the Spirit of the LORD departed from Saul, and...
A small crowd at the BYU Studies Symposium yesterday was on hand to receive Richard Holzapfel’s self-proclaimed Mormon history “bombshell.” He presented the morning plenary session on Wilford Woodruff’s 1897 recorded testimony, the first sound recording made of an LDS General Authority. The audience was treated to hearing parts of this recording, which is also available at the BYU Studies website.
I realize this may seem a bit late as we’ve studied the first part of Genesis which included the Book of Moses and the Book of Abraham. But, based on my own study and preparation for the first lessons, I have a few comments to make about the PofGP and the JST.
